Bangert: What Rokita would have heard at town hall

In a week of surly town halls across the country, congressman says he’s not ducking questions. Good, says a growing local movement, ready to put him on the spot

U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita said this week that he will continue to meet with constituents in 2017, but that an invitation to a town hall organized last week in West Lafayette came too late to fit into his schedule.(Photo: File photo)

It’s not hard to imagine how Thursday night might have gone had Todd Rokita, unannounced, walked up the steps to the second-floor Walnut Room at the West Lafayette Public Library for an event billed as the “Congressional Town Hall With or Without Rep. Rokita.”

Just cue up a few scenes featuring any one of these: Rep. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Rep. Tom McClintock of California. Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia.

The carnage from town halls held by members of Congress, using a recess to field questions in the past week, provided plenty of viral video moments, posted straight to Facebook, courtesy of voters from an agitated left across the nation. For what it’s worth, as they once sang, something’s happening here barely a month beyond Inauguration Day for the Trump administration.

It’s not a sure thing that the crowd in West Lafayette, standing room only in the library’s meeting room, would have gone off in similar ways. But one gauge of the lean in the room: Easily more than 90 percent of hands went up when asked if they had attended events coinciding with the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., the day after the Inauguration.

On Thursday night, they bonded and broke into groups, generating index cards filled with questions – on health care, education funding, the environment, women’s rights, immigration, investigations into Russian ties to the White House and more – for the next time Indiana’s 4th District congressman comes calling.

“I believe that the organizers, Vicky Woeste in particular, are committed to civil democratic discourse, and while some of Mr. Rokita's ideas may have been unpopular with the crowd that attended, he had no reason to be afraid,” said Amy Austin, a West Lafayette resident who helped lead the discussion. “As (former U.S. Rep.) Gabby Giffords said, ‘To the politicians who have abandoned their civic obligations, I say this: Have some courage. Face your constituents. Hold town halls.’”

(Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona, survived an assassination attempt in January 2011 during a constituent meeting outside a Tucson grocery store.)

Even as organizers were insisting that getting Rokita, a Republican from Brownsburg, to pop in wasn’t the actual goal, Rokita was recoiling. On Friday, Rokita said he wasn’t invited to the event until “just hours before it is set to start.” Chuck Hockema, Tippecanoe County Republican Party chairman, said the implication that Rokita was a no-show was disingenuous “and really nothing more than a stunt.”

“It’s ridiculous to think Todd Rokita doesn’t want to come to explain his philosophies about policies and tell people what he’s all about,” Hockema said.

Rokita went a step further, vouching for himself.

“While my schedule for this week has been finalized for months, I remain as committed as ever to hosting town halls and meeting with constituents,” Rokita said via his press staff in response to questions from the J&C. “Rated one of the most accessible members of Congress, I hosted 31 events open to the public last year, including 16 events in 16 different cities since Election Day. I plan on using the same process I have used in the past to continue being one of the most accessible members in Congress and certainly in Indiana.”

His office didn’t offer a schedule with town hall dates for 2017. And organizers contend that a call was made with an invitation to Rokita’s staff eight days in advance – “we gave him 192 hours’ notice,” Woeste said.

Either way, to be fair, it’s worth looking at how those public access opportunities played out for Rokita in 2016 in Tippecanoe County. His staff listed two.

“The best way to continue earning that trust is to answer your questions honestly and listen to you personally,” Rokita wrote in the announcement ahead of June 28. “As your U.S. representative, face-to-face gatherings are where I best get my marching orders, and it’s how you can hear directly what is really going on.”

That day drew about a dozen people who wanted to speak with him, one-on-one, according to J&C reports that day. He was both challenged and supported on his stance on gun control. And he was shouted at after repeating that proof just isn’t there that humans are causing climate change. On that corner, the crowd listened as Rokita contended that evidence to the contrary was drummed up by “liberal scientists.”

(In past Congress on Your Corner events, typically free-wheeling events, Rokita has done everything from deflect calls to impeach then-President Barack Obama to making a high school student cry when he shut down her questions about sensible gun control and his view that gun ownership is a God-given right protected by the Second Amendment. In that episode, in July 2013 near the courthouse fountain, Rokita iced the conversation with this line: "No. See, that's why you'll never be able to communicate with me this way, because you have a fundamental different perspective on who gives someone the rights found in our Constitution.")

The second public forum in Tippecanoe County in 2016 was Nov. 21, the Monday of Thanksgiving week. It was part of what he described in his weekly Rokita Report as a “whirlwind tour of the 4th District” that day. He swung by Sacred Grounds, a coffeehouse on Wabash Avenue in Lafayette, as the fourth stop in a blitz that also hit cafes and restaurants in Brownsburg, Greencastle, Crawfordsville, Monticello, Delphi, Frankfort and Lebanon.

What did he hear that day? By his own account in the Rokita Report: “I witnessed people’s excitement about President-elect Donald Trump. I also heard from Hoosiers who are fed up with Obamacare’s rising premiums and other failures. … It was an exciting day, and I appreciate the chance to hear directly from Hoosiers and get marching orders for my work in Washington.”

That day accounted for half of the 16 events in 16 cities he mentioned since Election Day. Not quite a series of town halls, really. Not quite the message coming out of Thursday’s meeting at the West Side library.

And probably not quite what Rokita should expect if he follows through and schedules – as promised – more times to meet face to face with constituents in 2017. (And not simply a stop at a coffeehouse on an eight-city, one-day tour of the district.)

The index cards say so. (Woeste said all questions and notes from Thursday’s meeting were delivered to Rokita’s office in Lafayette on Friday.)

Candidates, inspired (or should that be surprised?) by November’s results, are lining up, hoping to make Rokita a front line casualty in the Trump era. So far, three Democrats have announced they plan to run – Sherry Shipley and Joe Mackey of Lafayette, and George Reed of Brownsburg. Jeff Fites, 4th District chairman for the state Democratic Party, said there could be more.

The reality is the 4th District is a huge mountain for Democrats, whether they face Rokita – who is rumored to be eyeing a run for U.S. Senate against Democrat Joe Donnelly in 2018 – or someone else. Rokita has never had less than 62 percent of the vote since his first run in 2010. The district has voted Republican for president at rates of 64.3 percent in 2016, 62 percent in 2012 and 54.2 percent in 2008. (In 2008, Barack Obama took Indiana.)

The 4th District is one of the least likely to go Democrat anywhere.

Maybe it would make sense, if the target really is on the U.S. House seat, to put that left-leaning energy into finding more moderate Republicans willing and able to make a run in the May 2018 primary.

But we’re getting away from the topic at hand, which is: What about the next two years?

“I know people are worried; but more than that, I believe, they want their elected representatives to listen to their concerns,” said Woeste, one of the “Congressional Town Hall With or Without Rep. Rokita” organizers. “The White House now seems completely untethered. I think Rokita would be smart to maintain an open channel even in the most liberal county in his district.”

Rokita says it’s going to happen. It just wasn’t going to happen during a week when public forums were staging public takedowns of their local members of Congress.

He has to know constituents are itching to greet him. It’s not hard to imagine how it might go.